


Blank

by Obvious Reactionary (Mysterious_Prophetess)



Series: Lab Rat [11]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Keith (Voltron), Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-22 00:59:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8266919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mysterious_Prophetess/pseuds/Obvious%20Reactionary
Summary: Keith is facing his greatest identity crisis yet.---------------------------- -----------------   Malior had handled his baby sister's loyalty problems. Now, he had to take on the task of overwriting the loyalties of the Paladin now infamous for having the guts to challenge Zarkon directly without shattering his nephew's mind. It would be difficult.He's always enjoyed a challenge.





	

_Merra observed the battle droids as they unloaded the capsule containing her unconscious nephew into a secured cell meant for high profile prisoners. In the heart of the Galra Empire, lacking the ability to form Voltron, there would be no rescue for the Red Paladin on the part of his teammates._

_———————— —————_

_Zaerif made sure that the medicine keeping his nephew under was going to hold before he knelt next to his sister and brothers. Their Father was approaching. Zarkon arrived in the room._

_“Rise.” Merra, Zaerif, Sincline, and Arlioth did as they were bade. Lotor had entered the room with Zarkon, albeit a step behind him.Behind Lotor walked Malior, one of two Druid siblings._

 

_Zarkon drew near the bed they had place the unconscious Paladin on and studied him for a good long while._

_“Malior, I trust you can make him into a loyal subject to the Empire?” Zarkon said._

_“Of course, Father. Twyla is showing remarkable improvement after I purged that corruption from her mind,” Mailor said bowing his head, his white hair swished forwards nearly covering his red Druid markings and Purple-gray skin._

_“I will leave you to it. My other children, walk with me and tell me of how you brought this wayward cub to where he belongs. Lotor has given me his report, but I would like to hear yours as well,” Zarkon said._

_“Of course, Father,” the others said in unison. Mailor was left alonein the room. He pressed a button and droids entered with supplies. This was going to take a while. He could sense it._

————————— ——————

Keith opened his eyes and blinked at the bright sunlight. The smells made him look around in shock. He was home! Wait, he was home? That couldn’t be right, could it? His hover bike was still parked next to the house. He entered the door and found the room looked as it had the day before, before what, exactly? He checked his table for anything that could give him a clue as to what was going on. He shook his head before he walked into the bathroom and used the sink to splash cold water onto his face to try to think more clearly.He caught his reflection and jumped. There was a purple-cat person in the mirror instead of his face. Wait. Keith pulled his dagger off his belt and unwrapped the hilt revealing the crest.

Zarkon’s Family Crest.

 **His** Family Crest. Keith dropped the dagger and grabbed his head, claws prickling into his scalp. Claws?He looked down at his hands and they were purple.He screamed as memories force themselves to the forefront of his mind.

 

 _The Druid. The Change. His escape. Adapting to being Galra. Voltron. Voltron!_ The world around him fell apart and he heard clapping. He turned and the memories of the Druid threatened to overwhelm him again.

“I’d take offense to that, if she hadn’t done all that to you. She was very lucky that traitor killed her and her crew so mercifully. Otherwise, Merra and Zaerif would have taken her a part molecule by molecule,” the Druid male said, “I’m being rude, though. I’m your Uncle Malior.”

“What’s going on?” Keith snarled. The place they were in couldn’t possibly exist.

“Temper, temper. Then again, you _do_ seem to take after both my baby sister and our Father quite a bit in that regard,” Malior said.

“ ** _I am nothing like that monster_**!” Keith yelled. Mailer chuckled.

“How creative. Surely you could do better than that, little one!” Keith charged at the Druid, who casually side stepped the attack and with a kick knocked Keith onto his face and stomped down to pin him. Keith thrashed but couldn’t fight the pressure Malior was somehow exerting.

“How predictable. Now what to do with you? You seem to have accepted your form even on this level, which I was not expecting, but how to proceed. Your quintessence sensitivity is proving to be quite troublesome. Any less, and you’d have never overcome that first illusion, and this would have been easy. Of course, I doubted this would be easy from your sheer force of will alone. Will and Quintessence Sensitivity? Trying to give you a false memory would spell disaster for all involved. Your own will power would make shreds of those in a lunar cycle or less. If not, then you’d end up with your mental state deteriorating. Coupled with your high level of sensitivity and madness would be inevitable. I refuse to shatter your mind, so that means trying to give you loyalty through that method is out of the question.”

 

“Why do you care?” Keith asked.

“Because you’re family. Ah, I can sense you’re surprised by this even though you’ve seen several occasions on which Galra have shown their families matter greatly to them. It’s right here, in your mind. So, if I can’t brainwash you or overwrite your memories, I can do something that you might be able to undo on your own someday, if you’re lucky. I’m just going to lock these memories away.”

“No!” Keith managed to get free of Malior's foot and stood facing him.

“Did I say I was erasing them?” he said.

“You can’t be trusted,” Keith said.

“Why not?”

“You’re a Druid, you twist things to be what they’re not,” Keith said.

“Some Druids do. If you have been raised in the Empire, you would have been one of us too,” Malior said.

“Never!” Keith said.

“To be honest, I don’t blame my baby sister for leaving you on that planet. My siblings wouldn’t have cared you were a cross-breed as Sinecline and Lotor are half-Altean, and Father wouldn’t have cared much either. Don’t give me that look. Like I said, he fathered two half-breeds himself. It would not have been a fun life for you outside our family,” Malior said with a shrug, “But now that butcher did what she did, things should prove a little easier to deal with.”

“You say this as if you wouldn’t have done this to me yourself,” Keith sneered.

“If you had asked me, I would have, but I’m not one for sloppy work. It’s a miracle that there were only minor flaws in your genome,” Malior said, “Had you been happy in your other form, I wouldn’t have done anything against your will unless Father ordered it. Chances are, he might have, but we’re not here to speak about hypotheticals. I’m here to lock your memories away so that I don’t have to erase them. After all, you’re the Red Paladin. Voltron is going to need you back and they’re going to need you to have your memories.”

“You’re a rebel too?” Keith said in shock. Malior laughed at the look on Keith’s face.

“You really think that none of us object to what our Father is doing aside from your mother?” Malior said with a smirk, “I’m not going to lie to you, this is going to hurt. Oh, and as a nice added bonus I’m going to just give you the Galra language.”

“How are you going to do that?” Keith asked.

“I’m going to download that knowledge to you first and then lock everything else that isn’t that knowledge away.” Malior placed a hand to the ground before everything erupted into bright light and pain.

———————————————————————————————————— ———————

_Malior staggered back from the bed that held his nephew and covered his ears. The Red Paladin was screaming and thrashing. His eyes opened and looked at the room blankly before he was unconscious once more._

_“Was that supposed to happen, baby brother?” Malior turned to see Sinecline was leaning against the door frame._

_“His mind was resistant to me. His sensitivity made it nearly impossible to alter anything and then his will threw me out. Malior concentrated and saw that everything looked perfectly blank, “He wiped his own memories in the struggle.”_

_“That was always a possible outcome.” Malior bowed his head to Haggar as she entered the room, “I see that you managed to at least give him our language before he pushed you out.”_

_“Of course,” Malior said, “Lady Haggar, would you assist me in fixing the mistakes that amateur made whenever she purified this cub?”_

_“I would have been insulted if you hadn’t picked up on them,” Haggar said._

————————— ———————————— ————————

A pair of yellow eyes opened and recognized nothing around them. The room, was huge and very nicely furnished and the scents detected indicated that this was a place the owner spent a lot of time in. That owner being _him_. He sat up and saw a form sleeping next to his bed whose scent was also all over this room and smelled like him but _not_ indicating that this was a parent. Mother. She stirred and grabbed him into a hug.

“Kioreth!” she said happily hugging him. Once she let go she looked into his eyes and her face fell. Was he “Kioreth?” Seemed like it. The name felt almost right but there was something…. _missing_.

“I’m sorry,” he said looking down at his fingers.

“With the way your ship crashed, we’re lucky you’re alive,” she said sadly, “I was warned this might happen, but I wasn’t ready for it.”

“Ship?” Kioreth said looking back up. Flying? Him? Flying seemed right.

“You’re already an expert pilot even as a cadet,” she said with a watery smile, “Top of your class.”

“How did I crash?” Kioreth asked rubbing his head.

“Solar flare. You’re very lucky to be alive right now.” Kioreth looked up at the source of the voice and saw his Mother bowing her head to him. Though this larger galra didn’t look much like Kioreth or his Mother, his scent also indicated they were related.

“Father, he doesn’t remember anything,” Mother said sadly. Father to his Mother but that made this new person—

“I see. I suppose I’ll have to introduce myself to my own grandson. I’m Zarkon, ruler of the Galra Empire. Lord Zarkon to everyone else, but to you I’ve always been Grandfather.”

————————— ———————————— ————————

_That night, Twyla and Malior sat in her private quarters sharing a bottle of Andorian Whiskey. The small table they sat at was in a corner of her sitting area and the shot glasses were made of some sort of purple crystal._

_“Everyone believes that you’ve completely brainwashed me?” Twyla asked throwing back a shot._

_“This is me we’re talking about here,” Malior said with a snort, “I gave everyone a download of some false memories to play along with this charade, the only person without any memories, fake or not, is Kioreth.”_

_“Are his memories truly gone?” Twyla asked. Malior threw a shot back and shook his head._

_“Locked away,” he said. Twyla let out a sigh of relief._

_“Of all of my elder siblings, I’d have never pegged_ **_you_ ** _as a rebel,” Twyla said._

_“That’s the point of a_ **_successful_ ** _operative,” Malior said as he poured them two new shots. Twyla glared at him before she grabbed her shot and tossed it back gesturing for another. Mailor complied after drinking his own shot._

_“Now what?” she asked._

_“We all play our parts,” Malior said, “If we’re lucky,after a while, Father will just magnanimously promote his own grandson to official pilot status, despite his young age, and have him flying for Arlioth or Merla and then Voltron will do the rest for us.”_

**Author's Note:**

> It's Wednesday again!
> 
> This installment was hard to write. I had to redraft it and even then I ended up rewriting sections of it.


End file.
